Double dog flip

When's the last time someone did a
backflip when you walked in the door?
Home Sweet Home, jiggity-jig!

Notice nature

This sundog is a South Dakota gift from God as a thank you for keeping a jovial spirit during the sub-zero months.  Now we have two Frozen Chosen tundra advantages:  the cold keeps the riff-raff out and the sun dog in.  Very beautiful.  But, don't be deceived; when the sundog howls on the horizon, it does not mean it is warm and toasty.  They only appear in sub-zero temps when sunlight passes through ice crystals.

"For since the creation of the world, God's invisible qualities - His eternal power and divine nature - have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made..."  Romans 1:20

Let the artists create again

Dear churches of North America, do you not know that we are planning a wedding feast?  Have you forgotten that? You are wedding planners! What wedding would lack music, art, poetry, dance, or delectable foods? We need the best artists, poets, dancers, musicians, and architects to prepare for the Feast of grace when you will dance, sing, paint, and create with the living God.   

Makoto Fujimura, Artist

The Four Holy Gospels

“We, today, have a language to celebrate waywardness, but we do not have a cultural language to bring people back home.”

– Makoto Fujimura –

"The Four Holy Gospels" - Makoto Fujimura

Under the big top: the desire for drama

Mankind is made for Drama.  Divine Subversive Eternal Drama.  We are invited- each one - to join the Creator in what He is doing "on earth as it is in Heaven."  We are all enjoined to accomplish God's enormous project of overwhelming evil with Good.  Dallas Willard calls God's drama, "The Divine Conspiracy."  

Shunning the Divine Drama, however, men, women and children will contrive faux dramas.  The stage for these pathetic attempts at excitement  are the halls of middle schools, homes and high schools, malls and telly screens across the fruited plain.  The characters spout and spew their faux outrage and fevered excitement on Facebook and other social networks.  Absent the Divine Drama, fake drama will invariably surface like a grease stain on a Rembrandt.  Nevertheless, what we really want within our hungry souls is to see Redemption.  The Prodigal Son's Return.  The upside down world set right side up.  Acts 17:6  

Rembrandt's "The Return of the Prodigal"

PT Barnum squeezed every ounce of dramatic fascination from audiences in his Under the Big Top shows.  Claiming to feature a living mermaid, those who loved to be deceived paid good money to see a monkey torso sewed onto a dead fish.  "Barnum's success as a showman can be attributed in no small part to his understanding of mass psychology.  As Daniel Boorstin observed, '[c]ontrary to popular belief, Barnum's great discovery was not how easy it was to deceive the public, but rather, how much the public enjoyed being deceived.'" 

David A. Eisenberg writes,  that (The gullibly bored) "are willing, even eager, to sacrifice authenticity for excitement, truth for novelty.  For Aristotle, it was the unexamined life that was not worth living; for modern man, it is the uncontrived life."

Please participate in the Divine Drama.  Join Jesus in his redemptive plans.  All are welcome.  Even Gaga, the queen of faux drama.   

http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/02/the_american_appetite_for_deception.html

This pic touches my heart.
Isaiah seems like a little boy,
coloring away like he's 5 or 6.  

Some folks just make pretty babies.
There's no two ways about it.  

Summer 2012 in the Spearfish pool?
No, Winter '13 in the Gillette indoor.

Unassailable quote

"We need to get beyond all this lousy identity politics and deal with people as individuals on the content of their character." -Mark Steyn

For posterity

http://townhall.com/columnists/walterewilliams/2013/01/16/are-guns-the-problem-n1488804/page/full/

Makes more sense than anything I've read so far.  Truth always does.

A face to launch a thousand ships

and Gramma out the driveway.  

Confession cleanses the soul

Sometimes, it's absurd humor.

There is a near-disastrous story surrounding my return California Christmas trip

that I was never going to repeat.  But, what the hey!

These two splendid bottles were carefully wrapped to accompany me home by Mark Nadler, 

the family vino aficionado.  

The one on the left is a Brian Benson Cellars, Kandy Red.  

The beautifully waxed Belle Glos is the

tastiest Pinot Noir to hit the pallet.  

The moral of this story is NEVER ASSUME.

Never assume - when traveling - that I have any idea what to do.  

After checking in at SFO, I asked the gentleman if I should check my parcel or send it through.  It's $35 to check a second item so when he said, "I'd just carry it on," I decided - dat-gum it - to do just that.  

But the check-in person did not realize that the parcel was wine;

two mid-range-expensive bottles of delicious liquid vino.  

The operative word here is liquid.  

For some mind-lapsed reason, I did not remember that nary a drop

of liquid can pass through the fine filter of the TSA scanners.

It occurred to me just as I was removing my shoes in the security area.

"Maybe they won't notice!" I mused.  

"Is this yours?" inquired the security gentleman.

After he reviewed the decade long law that forbids an oz of liquid passing through the pearly gates,

I became starkly aware of my dilemma: Miss my flight or kiss the red goodbye.

I decided to wind back through the security labyrinth, check-in the red parcel,

and work my way for a second time through the long-line security check.

It was a smidge nerve wracking.  

The line seemed frozen in time as the minutes ticked away.  

But no worries, my departure gate was 

the closest to the security mouse-maze.  

No wait, the gate was the LAST one in the tarmac.  At the very end.  

Nearly off the edge and onto the runway.

Run!  Or at least jog.  (Where's Mitt when I need him?)  

HAPPY ENDING!

My flash-frayed nerves were reposed with a nice glass of White on the flight home.

Kandy and Pinot are safely in the entryway rack.  

L'chaim

Winter dip

Wee Lassie - Amelia Margaret's - first dip in the deep blue sea.  

Apparently, she loved it.  

Brave Morgan

Through Thick and Thin, Love Wins

Today is Jennifer Fulwiler's 36th birthday.  The occasion calls for some reflection.   

Jenn is pregnant with their sixth child but in the middle of the waiting, the doctors discovered several cysts in her lungs.  The potentially life-threatening condition was, thankfully, diagnosed in time.  On her blog, Jennifer tells her conversion story from atheism to faith in Jesus Christ with wild humor.  Today's birthday post reflects on lessons learned in a season of sickness, long recovery and hope.  

"I’ve come to see the radically freeing truth that our plans only matter to the extent that they’re ordered toward deeper intimacy with individual people.  You can live a life ordered toward human intimacy as a jet-setting movie star or as an invalid confined to a hospital bed; whether you find yourself surrounded by Hollywood directors or the nurses on night shift, you will always find yourself surrounded by people in need of love. So if your ultimate goal is to make the world a little brighter by touching one person at a time, you can do that under any circumstances.  

If your plans were not love-driven in the first place, then they were the kind of stupid, time-wasting plans that people shake their fists and rue through tears on their deathbeds; and if they were love-driven, then there are no worldly circumstances that could prevent you from executing them, even if the details change a bit."

Jennifer Fulwiler, Wise Catholic sister

http://www.conversiondiary.com/

Wine club member

Brian Benson Cellars,
Paso Robles, California

Vintage Robert, circa mid to late 80's

John VanDusen - to the left of Robert -
posted this picture of their
time in Juarez, Mexico on FB.

Here is John's commentary:
"We were part of the Juarez ministry team.
Robert is one of my heroes.  
He was always ahead of the curve and simply cool."

Classic MJ

Looking mighty spiffy in her
Scottish plaid
with Gramma Raeann enjoying
the joy.  

Sad fact of the day; so let us Pray

My experience in the system leaves me with no doubts on this issue: in official Washington, waste, fraud and abuse are seen as normal.   Jonathon Moseley, American Thinker

Eye has not seen

EYE HAS NOT SEEN in 2013

However, as it is written: "No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him"--I Cor.2:9